More than two decades after her infamous lip-sync performance on “Saturday Night Live,” Ashlee Simpson is revealing if she would return to the NBC late night show.
Following her win on season 14 of The Masked Singer earlier this month, Simpson, 41, admitted to Entertainment Weekly that she could now “laugh about” her 2004 “SNL” appearance.
During the live SNL show, she first performed her hit song, “Pieces of Me,” before returning to the stage to sing “Autobiography.” However, the vocals for earlier performance played instead leaving her to do a hoedown dance and exit the stage, which sparked a controversy about her lip-syncing.
“It’s something I’ve been through, so it’s not something I look at like I’m going through anymore,” she explained. “It’s a part of my young adulthood and what kind of shaped me as the person I am now.”
“I think that [in] life, sometimes you need a little fight in you,” she added. “So that definitely gave me that.”
In fact, Simpson alluded to the incident in her final clue package on “The Masked Singer,” calling it an experience that “changed everything.” She added, “I was publicly humiliated, called a fraud, a fake. It was devastating. I was so young and I thought it would define me forever.”
As for if she would return to the show now, Simpson admitted, “Oh, yeah. I would definitely go back, that chapter is behind me and I never looked at myself as that moment defined me. Right after that, I went on tour and everything.”
Not only did she go on tour, Simpson returned as a musical guest on “SNL” the following season to perform her songs “Catch Me When I Fall” and “Boyfriend.”
Back in 2018, Simpson told E! News that the controversy made her “a better person.”
“It’s definitely not difficult to talk about … that was a very long time ago,” she shared at the time. “It’s something that happened to me and things in life happen to you and they make you stronger and they make you a better performer, a better person.”
She added: “I think things like that build your character and your strength and it’s how you handle them.”